


In the Gravity of You

by frodo (ringbearer)



Series: Red Ribbon [4]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Death, F/M, Hurt No Comfort, Love, Reylo - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:15:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22261681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ringbearer/pseuds/frodo
Summary: Rey died and it ruined Ben Solo and transformed him into Kylo Ren.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Red Ribbon [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1582738
Comments: 3
Kudos: 15





	In the Gravity of You

**Author's Note:**

> this took much longer to write than i wanted it to, but i finally was able to do it today and i am really happy with how it turned out.

_Death has a funny way of changing people into their worst nightmares._

Steam hissed up through the ragged fissures in the wasted forest of shriveled barren trees on the violent red planet of Mustafar. A forest now littered with the bodies of the oddly shaped, darkly clothed Darth Vadar cultists that resided there.

Only one figure stood among the wreckage, his chest heaving after the savage massacre, the gloved fingers of one hand gripping his stuttering lightsaber in an iron vise-like grasp, the fingers of the other curled into an equally tight fist. His teeth were bared and his jaw was clenched.

Every part of him shook, vibrating with adrenaline, rage, and a startling, heart-wrenching grief.

It didn’t matter how many he cut down, how many he killed. And it didn’t matter whether they deserved it or not either.

It wouldn’t bring her back.

Deep down Ben knew this.

Much closer to the surface, he refused to admit to it.

_She’s gone and she’s never coming back. Surrender to the darkness, my friend. Surrender to it completely. It will take the pain away. It will make everything so much easier._

The voice of Snoke echoed through his mind over and over again, saying the same words he always said when Ben caught himself thinking of her.

He shook his head slightly, almost as though he could make the voice go away by shaking it off.

He knew better.

It had been just over a year, maybe even a year and a half at this point, since Rey had died. She’d been killed in a dogfight against the First Order. Not even direct battle like she’d deserved to die. She’d deserved not to die at all. She’d deserved to live a long life. But exploding into nothing in space had been so cruel and wrong and angry and unfair.

Ben hadn’t even gotten to bury her.

There was nothing to bury.

So he’d left the Resistance. Left his mother and father, who loved him, and all the people who’d been her friends as well as his and done what he’d sworn he never would.

And now he was Kylo Ren, Master of the Knights of Ren of the First Order. Kylo Ren, lost, raging against the world alone and afraid and in agony, thinking that somehow it would fill the voice her absence left inside him.

Her absence. And sometimes...her presence.

She, like him, had been training to become a Jedi before her cruel and tragic death in an X-Wing and she’d learned enough, just enough, to be able to come back and sometimes torment him.

He saw her in dreams and there he could hold her, press his lips to her skin, run his fingers through her hair, and tell her over and over and over again until his voice grew hoarse what he never would again: _I love you, I love you, I need you, don’t go, not yet, I need you, I’ll die without you._

Because that was really what had happened after she’d been taken from him so forcefully and without reason: he’d died. To be more precise, Ben Solo had died and in his place had rise Kylo Ren.

He pretended they were different, but they weren’t really.

Kylo Ren felt the raw ache of Rey’s absence the same way Ben Solo did.

Neither of them would recover from it. Not ever.

Such was the curse of losing one half of a dyad: the other half was never again whole.

And the visits her ghost made him in waking couldn’t in any way fill that bottomless void.

So he tried to fill it with everything else: anger, violence, and devastation.

He’d tried sex for a while; meaningless sex with random First Order pilots and Stormtroopers who were only too eager to please him, but none of them were her. None of them looked like her or sounded like her or _felt_ like her and every encounter only left him feeling emptier than before.

Burning himself helped some and drinking helped more, but Snoke resented it, condemned it, said it dulled his senses and made his Force powers weak. And that was true, it did do that, but Ben knew the real reason he hated it: when he drank, Snoke’s voice quieted to a dreary whisper. If he drank enough, he couldn’t hear it at all.

He dropped his head.

How proud his mother must be of him now.

His head snapped up.

Movement behind him.

He couldn’t hear it, but he could feel it, and as soon as he felt it, he grimaced.

He knew who it was.

“Ben. Please. Stop this. Go home.”

She sounded the same, exactly as she had in life, only more sad.

His fingers tightened around his lightsaber.

“You left me,” he replied, not turning, his eyes fixed on an invisible point far in from him. His voice was a monotone as dead as his expressions had become. “I no longer have a home.”

“Your mother misses you, Ben,” she whispered. “Please. Go back to her.”

“She won’t want me after what I’ve done,” he spat back. “You know what I’ve done. Would you want me now? Would you want a monster?”

“Ben...she’s your mother...she loves you...”

Now Ben did turn around, his expression contorting, a mask of indescribable hate that had been lost on him when she’d been alive. It seemed her death had unlocked more within him besides grief and rage and unlimited pain.

“Ben Solo is _dead_!” he shouted, pointing his lightsaber at the silvery-blue apparition before him. “Just like you are! You can’t fix death! And you can’t fix _me_!”

Rey’s eyes matched her voice: lost and impossibly sad.

It seemed as though her death had ruined them both.

_Then why am I the only one paying for it?_

In his furious sorrow, he felt hate for her too. She’d done this to him. She’d made him this way. If she hadn’t left him, everything would be different. They’d still be together. They might even be married by now. She’d have a last name and it would be his.

But instead he was lost and being torn apart, stitch by brutal stitch.

Soon there would be nothing left.

Maybe then he’d been released from agony he was suffering by being alive.

Maybe then they’d be together again.

Ben lowered his lightsaber, looking away.

Looking at her hurt too much.

“What are you doing? Why are you here?”

“I’m here to help you,” she replied, her voice shaking.

In his peripheral vision, he could see her moving slowly towards him.

He resisted the urge to step towards her.

Or step back.

Her words made his face snap to hers again and again he was angry. He spoke through gritted teeth: “What makes you think being here is fucking _helping_ me?”

“Ben,” her voice broke as she said the word. She was inches from him now. Her hands came up, resting on either side of his face.

His brows drew together and his eyes closed, his pain written all over his face, etched into it.

If he tried very hard, he could feel her hands on him, feel the warm and softness of her skin.

If he were drunk, he could pretend she were alive too.

“You’re lost.” Her words made him open his eyes again. They flicked up to her ghostly face. “You’re so lost and so angry. All you are anymore is pain and hatred. I’m here because I’m lost too. I can’t leave this world without you...and I don’t want to.” She shook her head as she spoke. She swallowed. “I’ll be with you the rest of your life, but my visits will hurt as long as you let them.”

“As long as I let them?” he spat out, his tone incredulous. “How can they not? You’re gone, Rey! You’re gone! You left me behind! How _can_ I feel anything but pain? There is nothing but pain! Not anymore!” He was shouting now, throwing the words right in her face. “There never will be anything more ever again! Not with you gone!”

She knew this. He could tell. And it only served to incite him more.

“I’m sorry, Ben,” she said softly. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

And then she was gone, fading away into nothing as surely as the steam from the vents beneath his feet and then that was all he was left with; that and the dead bodies around him.

Again Ben’s entire body vibrated with unbridled fury and then he screamed, the sound ragged, lost, and full of all the agony within him. He swung his lightsaber in violent arcs, hearing the blade, as fractured and broken as he was, hum angrily as he flung it around, destroying as many of the trees surrounding him as he could.

If he were able, he would’ve destroyed the entire planet. He would’ve brought every inch of it crumbling to ashes using his own bare hands to do every single bit of the damage.

Finally, his knees buckled and he collapsed and when his body shook again, it was from sobs that sounded more like a stuttering version of his screams.

_She’s gone, she’s gone, I lost her, I failed her, she’s gone._

He would never love again.

**Author's Note:**

> i was thinking of just adding this as a chapter to stitches, but that didn't make much sense, so i just made it its own fanfiction. i suppose this could also be an alternative way for other worlds than these to end, but i want that to have a happy ending


End file.
